


Aperture Science Avian Testing Initiative

by letsmoveourbootybutts



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Birds, Fluff, Happy Ending, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6406447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsmoveourbootybutts/pseuds/letsmoveourbootybutts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is just pure fluff i wrote about glados raising baby birds that i wrote to make myself feel better and address some of my logistical concerns regarding a Big Robot taking care of Small Birds</p><p>implied chelldos because i'm gay</p><p>takes place after the end of the peer review dlc</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aperture Science Avian Testing Initiative

Caring for three juvenile corvids was more of an undertaking than GLaDOS anticipated. While she could easily access any information humans had written down on their upkeep, making it a material reality wasn't as simple. She managed to locate preserved stores of oatmeal and frozen beef, but soon found that she simply didn't have appendages small and dextrous enough to interact with them. She reluctantly delegated that task to P-Body while she set to designing a more delicate set of extremities to handle the fragile little things. Atlas's job was to transfer them when it came time to replace their nesting. And they were far too small to begin testing.

Still, she loved them. She talked to them constantly, and while they couldn't talk back (yet) she wanted to be sure they were developing their language capabilities and beginning to understand the world around them. Like a human baby, but less disgusting and oozy and fat. GLaDOS had never been squeamish about dealing with humans and all of the bodily fluids they smeared all over her pristine chambers, but something about human babies always made her uncomfortable. Mister Chubby Beak and his sisters Sarin and Strychnine were so much more handsome and refined in her scientific opinion. 

Soon enough they grew their first feathers, a soft grey stubble that bristled around their bulbous closed eyes and awkwardly poked out of their small wings. Her Avian Enrichment Appendages were fresh out of development and Atlas and P-Body were sent back to the testing tracks for lack of anything better to do. All for the best anyway. They were her kids, and she didn't intend for them to have any bumbling aunts and uncles to impact them while they were still young and developing. And thank God there were no humans to damage them even more. Her archives featured hundreds of videos of crows taught infantile "tricks" purely for human amusement, and even more horror stories of crows injured and killed by human stupidity. The ache of wanting them to have another mother, a specific mother who GLaDOS knew well and knew would be horrible at taking care of anything so small and fragile and precious and alive, was easily suppressed. 

Their eyes, when they opened, were a beautiful shade of grey-blue as they entered their awkward adolescence all too soon. She gave them a microcosmic enrichment center, with perches and toys and puzzles that they could begin to work on developing their brains and muscles. Meanwhile, she sent P-Body and Atlas down to the bowels of the facility. Surely there were more bird populations nesting beyond her reach. Her three children wouldn't live forever, and while it was a troublesome thought that her initial brood would eventually die (since when had death ever bothered her? Since when did she care?), maybe there was a way to prolong the Avian Testing Initiative. 

Sarin and Strychnine and Mister Chubby Beak grew, large and glossy and sassy and smart, able to quickly deduce combination locks and physics based puzzles. GLaDOS was still working on an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device that they would be able to hold, but in the meantime, they were burning through the specialized test chambers she designed for them. She had opposed Wheatley's use of monitors, but now she set up a few (not an excessive amount) so that her kids could see their mother upon completing a chamber, and she rewarded them at the end of each testing track by letting them fly in her main chamber and eat tidbits of meat and get head scritches from her. 

Soon enough, Atlas and P-Body confirmed the presence of more crows, and thriving populations of magpies, thrushes and woodpeckers. It was going to be a productive eternity.


End file.
